


what i like about you (you hold me tight)

by bageldiscourse



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Cuddling, Domestic Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Moving In Together, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 15:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15489201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bageldiscourse/pseuds/bageldiscourse
Summary: The next morning, Kevin kisses jam and peanut butter off Brady’s lips in the kitchen as Jimmy makes sandwiches for the three of them and he thinks, absently, that he thinks he could be a morning person if they all started like this.(This is the story of how they got there.)





	what i like about you (you hold me tight)

**Author's Note:**

> after a brief period of absence i am fully back on my writing-exclusively-fluff bullshit. back and better than ever, or something like that. this is extremely self-indulgent and i hope u dig it anyway.

Kevin sleeps like he does—well, most things in life, actually: with that same thoughtful, carefully neutral expression on his face that he gets when he’s on the bench and he’s thinking about upcoming plays, or when he’s asked a question by media that he would rather not answer outright, or even when he’s playing Monopoly with Brady and Jimmy and he’s planning his next move in his head.

As he sleeps, his eyebrows furl into that same look Jimmy and Brady are so accustomed to seeing, and his lips purse into the slightest hint of a smile that you would only notice if you were looking for it. His chest rises and it falls, like clockwork, sheets pooling around his hips because he’s always too hot when he sleeps, but doesn’t bother getting up to adjust the thermostat.

But he doesn’t _move_ , waking up in exactly the same position he fell asleep in, and it’s baffling, to Brady and Jimmy, how it’s even possible for someone’s head to hit the pillow and for them to be out like a light within a full sixty seconds.

It’s the middle of December the first time Jimmy and Brady experience it firsthand, walking into the guest bedroom of their apartment to find Kevin like that, having crashed at their place when they’d hung out after a game and it would’ve been rude of them to make him catch an Uber at half past midnight. So: he’s here, and he looks absolutely knocked out, despite the light from the window illuminating the room pretty substantially.

“Should we—” Jimmy says, stopping himself midway through the thought when he realizes he’s talking too loud and might wake him up. Kevin doesn’t so much as flinch, though, snoring lightly but otherwise completely motionless. Quieter, he says, “I mean, should we wake him up?”

Brady pulls his phone out and checks the time, and it’s well past ten in the morning, so he’s thinking they probably _should_ , but. “I mean, he looks pretty out of it.”

“We could make breakfast and see if he’s up after that?” Jimmy offers.

Admittedly, Brady almost misses what he’s saying, distracted by the way that, if he really pays attention to it, he can see Kevin’s grip on the pillow he’s spooning loosen and tighten ever so slightly, a stark contrast to the utter stillness of the rest of his body. “I could eat,” he finally says, barely able to tear his eyes away from the bed.

“Hey, plenty of time to drool over him later, okay?” Jimmy teases, and leaves the room to start on breakfast before Brady can say anything to that.

Brady joins Jimmy in the kitchen and they move around each other in relative silence, making pancakes and toast and coffee for three until Kevin emerges from the bedroom maybe a half hour later, sans shirt and wearing only a borrowed pair of boxers, since none of either of their clothes would fit him. And it’s—something, watching Kevin stumble into the room, bleary-eyed and mumbling something about needing coffee but otherwise looking right at home. He hoists himself onto the countertop next to where Jimmy’s making him a plate and accepts it gratefully, and it all feels natural, like this isn’t the first time they’ve all been here like this.

“How do you take it?” Brady asks, pouring a mug for him.

“With enough sugar to rot your teeth,” Kevin says, straight-faced and completely unashamed of how unappealing it sounds. Brady tries not to wince as he pours a generous five spoonfuls of sugar in Kevin’s mug.

He hands it to Kevin, who takes a long sip and says, “Perfect, thank you.”

“You sleep well?” Jimmy hums.

“Fine, yeah,” Kevin says, mouth half full with toast.

Brady wants to make a quip about that, but every time he opens his mouth the words he’s about to say fall impressively flat when he remembers he only knows that Kevin sleeps about as deeply as opossum playing dead is because he was _watching_ Kevin sleep, so he doesn’t say anything at all.

The rest of breakfast is quiet but it’s easy, and since they have an off day Kevin stays over a little longer and they play video games until Kevin’s beaten them enough times for them to lose count. Kevin leaves late in the afternoon, wearing yesterday’s clothes, but not before taking a blueberry bagel from the stash in the freezer that Jimmy and Brady keep for him to make him feel more at home when he stays over, sometimes.

“I’m not _drooling_ over him, by the way,” Brady says, as soon as the door clicks shut.

“I mean, it wouldn’t be the worst thing if you were,” Jimmy shrugs, and doesn’t expand on that thought at all.

“You can’t just—just _say_ things like that,” Brady protests, more confused by it than he is frustrated or anything.

“We could talk about it,” Jimmy says, pretending to consider it. He pulls Brady into a kiss before he can finish the thought, though, and keeps kissing him until the tension and uncertainty bleeds out of his shoulders. “Or I could blow you, and we could talk after.”

Jimmy has no doubt in his mind that Brady will forget all about this after, but nonetheless Brady agrees, letting himself be tugged in the direction of the bedroom without further protest.

 

(And—yeah, they don’t talk about it after.)

 

Nothing really changes, after that day. Over the next few months Kevin keeps coming over, mostly after practices, and they’ll play video games, or go out to eat, and after awhile Jimmy and Brady start to get used to having him around.

The rest of the season passes by in a blur of plane rides and blueberry bagels and coffee runs in more cities than they can count on one hand, so Brady and Jimmy don’t really notice when it gets to the point that Kevin spends more time at their place than at his own, that there’s a toothbrush in the bathroom and some of his clothes in the guest bedroom. That they start watching HGTV even when Kevin’s not there because it feels too quiet in the apartment if it’s not playing for background noise whenever they’re home. Jimmy looks up one day and Brady’s sitting next to him on the couch wearing one of Kevin’s shirts—it’s noticeably big, because Kevin’s a good deal broader around the shoulders than Brady is, but Brady wears it like it’s no big deal at all—and there’s Kevin sitting in the armchair across from the couch, just messing around on Twitter.

And it sounds dumb, when he thinks about it, but Jimmy wants to pause time and live in this moment of realizing they’re one adult conversation away from _dating_ him, that it can be as simple as that. That even if they don’t get there, they’ll still have this, and maybe that can be enough.

 

But—

Fuck it. Jimmy wants more.

 

It’s the middle of April, and Kevin’s sitting on the couch with Jimmy on his left and Brady on his right, and they’ve finally decided what to order for dinner after an unreasonably long argument about the superior pizza place in Manhattan.

“You should move in with us,” Jimmy says, the words falling out of his mouth too easily. “Next season, you know,” he clarifies.

Brady and Kevin both look up at him with near-identical looks, until finally Kevin says, “Are you sure?”

“Obviously,” Jimmy says, just barely suppressing a laugh at the idea that there would be a reason for the answer to that question to be anything but _yes_ , a thousand times over. “I mean, we basically already live together anyway,” he says instead.

“Then yeah,” Kevin says, and he’s grinning, now, which is all Jimmy really wanted out of this conversation. “I would love to.”

“Really?” Brady says, and if it comes out a little too unsure, neither Kevin nor Jimmy pick up on it.

“Of course,” Kevin says, simple as anything. “Who else is gonna make sure you two function like real adults if I’m not here?”

“Okay, _first_ of all, you’re not even a full year older than I am, so that’s a ridiculous theory, and second—” Jimmy says, and then the doorbell rings before he can finish that thought.  “This conversation is not over!” he calls out, as he walks down the hall to answer the door and get their pizza.

Except that it most certainly is over, because nothing distracts three boys quite like pizza and video games. After they’ve tired themselves out, Kevin asks for probably the two-hundredth time if it’s cool if he crashes at their place tonight, and Brady and Jimmy tell him that he doesn’t have to ask anymore, he practically lives in the room as is anyway, and Jimmy doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that once Kevin moves in for real, he won’t hear that question nearly every night before he goes to sleep.

It’s the best he’s felt about change in a long time.

 

Jimmy, Brady, and Kevin start the long and taxing process of moving into their new place on a Tuesday in July. While they’re packing their lives into brown boxes, Jimmy makes a show of complaining that it’s officially hotter than hell outside.

(He thinks it counts for something that later that night when they’ve got the local news on for background noise, the weatherman confirms that New York and the rest of the East Coast is, in fact, in the very beginning stage of an intense heat wave.)

Brady holds out until Thursday—he buys them ice cream when they’re done with his and Jimmy’s place, and—well. Most of their place is filled with Kevin’s things, anyway, so after the ice cream run they have Kevin’s place packed before they’re even hungry for dinner.

(Part of this is due to the blatant lack of more than a handful of utensils and plates in Kevin’s place. “I’m starting to think,” Brady says, after they fit all his kitchenware in two medium-sized boxes total, “that the reason you hang out with us so much is because you don’t own enough kitchenware to feed yourself.”

“Do you even own more than one pan?” Jimmy asks, holding up a frying pan he’d just packed into a box labeled _POTS + PANS_. “I’m pretty sure we should’ve labeled this box ‘pan,’ singular, dude.”

“Also, where do you keep your bowls?” Brady asks, and then corrects himself—“You do own a _bowl_ , don’t you?”

“When was the last time I ate something from a _bowl_ ,” comes Kevin’s reply, and really, it’s a miracle he ever lived on his own somewhat successfully.

“There’s a reason we keep Captain Crunch at our place,” Jimmy says, “and it’s not because Brady and I like it.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Kevin concedes. “Let’s just move on to the bedroom.”)

 

Kevin hates nothing like he hates unpacking—it’s the reason he always has a half-unpacked suitcase in his room at home at all times after long road trips—so when the first night in their new place rolls around three days later all that’s set up is one of the two beds, and the paper plates they bought on the way to the new apartment.

So they order pizza for the fourth day in a row. Naturally.

“I’m gonna head to bed,” Kevin says, after they’ve cleaned up from dinner.

“What, tired from unpacking absolutely nothing today?” Jimmy teases, though neither he nor Brady have done anything productive today, either. So, he probably doesn’t have any leverage in this argument to be teasing Kevin.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kevin says, and just to prove his point he takes a single spoon out of the box labeled _KITCHEN UTENSILS_ and makes a show of walking over to the kitchen and placing it in the drawer by the sink. “See? I’m a big help.”

Brady snorts. “Night, Haysie.”

“Night, guys,” Kevin says on his way to the bedroom, and then it’s just Brady and Jimmy and the Twins playing the Mets and the hum of the air conditioner.

“Hey,” Brady says, quieter. “You okay?”

Jimmy shrugs. “Just stressed about unpacking.” It’s not a lie, technically, but it isn’t the whole truth either. They both know that.

Brady understands, and kisses Jimmy until he forgets why the tension in his shoulders were there in the first place.

When they walk into the bedroom Kevin’s already fast asleep on the left side of the bed, so it’s easy for Jimmy to slot himself next to Kevin without worrying about waking him up. As soon as he settles, Kevin moves and slings an arm around Jimmy’s chest and moves half on top of him, their legs overlapping.

And that’s—the last thing Jimmy was expecting to happen, so it’s at least a plus that Kevin remains fast asleep through it all, and doesn’t see Jimmy blush a deep, embarrassing red.

It’s not particularly uncomfortable, is the thing, although his leg may feel sore in the morning from the position, but he finds it’s easy, lying with Kevin’s heartbeat synced up with his own and his hand running slowly through Kevin’s hair.

It’s pretty nice, actually, though he won’t admit that to anyone but himself just yet.

“A little clingy, eh?” Brady chirps, from his other side. During the year they’ve been dating, Brady has never been a big cuddler, which Jimmy didn’t mind, but he thinks he could get used to it, if it’s always going to feel this _right_.

“I can hardly say I’m surprised,” Jimmy says, all things considered. It does make sense that Kevin would be the biggest cuddler on the planet.

Brady hums his agreement and smacks a kiss on his shoulder before settling in for bed himself, and before Jimmy can overthink this sleeping situation any further, they’re both dozing off.

 

Out of habit from the season, Jimmy wakes up with the sun the next morning.

Both Brady and Kevin are still asleep on either side of him; since the night before, Kevin’s death grip on his hip has loosened considerably, which makes it easy enough for him to wiggle out of bed and head to the bathroom. Jimmy makes the mistake of looking back, as he’s halfway across the room, and Kevin’s still fast asleep but Jimmy watches him subconsciously reach a hand out for where Jimmy was lying next to him. And Jimmy almost thinks he _frowns_ when he grasps onto the empty space where he used to be, and that his breathing skips an irregular beat, but that’s probably just him projecting like hell. In any case, Jimmy makes his way over to the bathroom, and when he passes the bed again on his way out to the kitchen, Brady’s awake and looking at something on his phone, gently stroking through Kevin’s hair with his other hand as he continues sleeping, using Brady’s chest as a pillow.

Jimmy stops to ask Brady, “You want some coffee?”

“I mean, yeah, but I’m a little—” Brady says, and makes a gesture with his free hand to the pretty hardcore cuddling that’s happening. “Y’know. Stuck.”

Jimmy shrugs. “I’ll bring you some.”

“You are the best person I know,” Brady says, mostly sincere.

And yeah, Jimmy knows that.

 

A mug and a half of coffee and a full hour later, Brady convinces himself to get up, as much as cuddling with Kevin is really doing it for him, because he’s starting to get hungry and because he knows that if he stays in bed any longer, there’s no way he’s ever going to get out of it.

Kevin emerges from the bedroom as well some time after that—enough time has passed that Brady and Jimmy lose track of time making out in front of the stove instead of doing any real cooking, but not longer than it takes to eventually get to making a few plates of eggs and toast.

“So you’re a big cuddler, aren’t you,” Brady says, once they sit down for breakfast. It doesn’t come out accusatory, necessarily, but it makes Kevin feel like he has something to defend, anyway.

Kevin blushes something fierce at that, and Jimmy doesn’t wait for a reply to continue where Brady left off. “It’s no big deal, but—like, is that a thing for you?”

For a minute it’s silent, before Kevin starts to talk, and in that time Jimmy’s pretty sure everything’s ruined between them, but then. “When I was little I had these stuffed animals,” Kevin says, “and I would sleep with them every night from when I was, like, six to the end of high school. And then, in college, I was dating the guy I roomed with, so—we pushed our beds together and that helped me sleep through the night without any problems.” He takes a bite of toast and then, after a minute, says,  “But it’s stupid, and I’ll stop.”

“You—oh,” Jimmy says, not with any specific reaction attached, just trying to let the words sit with him, really. He shoves some eggs in his mouth to let himself think through what he should say next; much belatedly, all he comes up with is, “No, don’t stop.”

Kevin spends a good minute looking between the two of them, a little helpless, and thinking about the implications of that, how to _respond_ to something like that, before finally settling on, “I—yeah, okay.”

Jimmy gets up to clear the table, for something to do with his hands more than anything else.

“I’m gonna go on a run,” Kevin says, getting up to help clear the table first.

He drops his dishes off in the kitchen and then leaves, and the apartment is all that much quieter after the door clicks shut.

As Jimmy walks over to the living room, Brady catches him in a hug from behind, wraps his arms around Jimmy’s waist and kisses his neck. “You know I love you, yeah?”

“Of course,” Jimmy says, easy as anything.

“Good,” Brady says. “Then we should talk.”

“Is this about—”

“You know it is.”

“Sure,” Jimmy says, because it’s about time he stop running from his feelings like he’s back in high school. “But later, okay?”

“Okay,” Brady agrees, so they walk over to the living room couch, and Jimmy flips through channels on the TV until he settles on a movie Brady doesn’t recognize and won’t pay attention to anyway.

Some time later, Jimmy says, “It’s just complicated, okay.”

“Like—” he continues, mostly thinking out loud. He’s sitting with his head resting on Brady’s shoulder, and he thinks he’s finally ready to talk about this. “I don’t know, it’s so easy to want both of you at the same time, and I kind of forget sometimes that I probably can’t have both, so it’s easier to keep pretending that I can.”

“Why can’t we, though?” Brady says, and he sounds so sure when he says it, Jimmy almost believes they can have the happy ending he wants more than anything. “Honestly, I’m pretty sure he’d be down.”

“You think?”

“I mean, we’ll never know if we don’t try.”

“Just—I don’t know, what if we’re reading this wrong?”

“We can’t be stubborn about this forever, right? Worst case, we stay friends,” Brady says.

As much as Jimmy wants to argue with him about that, he knows Brady’s right. When he opens his eyes and absently look up and out the window by the kitchen, he sees Kevin standing in the doorway with the rare unreadable expression on his face. As soon as their eyes meet, Kevin darts his gaze away.

“Please tell me you didn’t hear any of that,” Jimmy says, sitting upright, though he knows it’s a long shot in hell they got that lucky. He can’t bring himself to look at Kevin, not now, so instead he’s studying the carpet pretty intently.

“Almost all of it, actually,” Kevin says, and when Jimmy finally looks up, Kevin’s looking mostly at his hands and not at all back at him.

“Cool, cool.” Jimmy takes a deep breath and looks over to Brady for some assistance, for any sort of help here at all, but he looks every bit as stunned as Jimmy, so this—may not go so well, if he’s left to his own devices.

“Do you want to sit down for this?” Brady asks. Kevin shrugs, helpless, and walks over to sit in between Jimmy and Brady. So—they’re really doing this.

“You weren’t supposed to find out like this,” Jimmy says, realizing belatedly how that was _so_ the wrong thing to say. “We were thinking of the right time to tell you, I mean.”

“I’ve kind of had a feeling for awhile,” Kevin admits, which. Looking back, makes sense, considering Jimmy and Brady weren’t the least bit subtle about, and probably have been that way since before they were even aware of it. “I didn’t want my feelings to get in the way of our friendship, but then things started to change, between us, and I thought—I thought _maybe_ I wasn’t imagining it.”

“That we like you too,” Brady finishes.

“Right,” Kevin says. He’s still looking at Brady, as if he’s anticipating something, and they’re sitting close enough that Brady can feel the warmth of Kevin’s near-steady breathing wrapped around him like a promise. Kevin’s looking at Brady’s lips, just because they’re _there_ , and when he looks up, Brady kisses him.

It catches him by surprise, at first—not the act itself, but how easy it is to melt into the kiss, pull Brady impossibly closer until he’s all but sitting in Kevin’s lap and nip at Brady’s bottom lip, revel in the soft noises Brady make.

Once they pull apart Kevin looks over at Jimmy, who looks completely mesmerized. “That’s—wow.”

“Yeah,” Kevin says, and he’s so _happy_ , he can’t help but smile as he leans in to kiss Jimmy.

He falls asleep later that afternoon with his head resting on Jimmy’s shoulder and loosely holding Jimmy’s hand, and Brady can’t resist his urge to take a picture to capture the moment.

 

The next morning, Kevin kisses jam and peanut butter off Brady’s lips in the kitchen as Jimmy makes sandwiches for the three of them and he thinks, absently, that he thinks he could be a morning person if they all started like this.

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the romantics' "what i like about you" but the 5sos cover, specifically. thank you


End file.
